♂Damien Saint-Amant

Damien Saint-Amant (died before 1639) was a French wine merchant, one of the 25 privileged wine merchants who followed the royal court. He was the tenth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through his daughter Anne St-Amand.

He is known from two records, the first being the marriage contract of his daughter Anne, made in Paris in 1639 and summarized in a 2024 published guide to the Paris notarial archives. The contract’s phrase, marchands de vin privilégiés suivant la cour, describes merchants who held a royal privilege to supply wine to the court, and its figure of 25 shows how few held it. On 26 February 1639 Anne St-Amand, written Anne Saint-Amant in the contract, was promised in marriage to Nicolas Provost, a master surgeon at Saint-Denis, by a contract made in Paris before the notary Denis Camuset. By then Damien was dead: the contract names him only as the former husband of Antoinette Tribou, who had remarried another of the 25 wine merchants, Charles Musnier, and who stood with Musnier for her daughter. Neither his birth, nor the date of his death, nor where he lived is recorded.

The inventory of 1654

On 26 March 1654 an inventory was taken in Paris after the death of his daughter Antoinette, partly at the request of his widow, Antoinette Tribou. It names the children of their marriage: Antoinette herself, and Catherine, Martin, Anne, Marie, Barbe and Jean.